THE FALL

by Marie Force

  Ted clicked on Caroline's message.

  "Hi Ted, thanks for asking about my ankle. It's been really painful (and getting the cast on was awful), but today was better than yesterday. I felt so bad when you left on Sunday. I hope you didn't leave because of me … I know today was a difficult day for you, and I hope you're holding up okay. Take care, Caroline."

  She knows why I left. Why did his heart have to skip a happy beat at that thought? He sat back and closed his eyes, feeling as if she had given him permission to relive the powerful emotions she'd stirred in him.

  When thinking about her became painfully overwhelming, Ted pulled himself back to reality and replied to her message. "Caroline, I left because I had things to do at home, so no worries." Desperate to protect his friendship with Smitty, he fought the desire to confirm her suspicions that he had, indeed, left because of her and what she made him feel. "Hope you can come with Smitty to Block Island and that your ankle mends quickly." When he couldn't think of anything else to say, he signed his name, hit "send," and dropped his head to his desk.

  A knock on his office door interrupted Ted's thoughts of Caroline.

  "Come in."

  Kelly walked in with a shy smile on her face. "Hi."

  "Hey." Ted struggled to regain his equilibrium. "What's up?"

  "I was just wondering if you're okay." She twisted her hands as if she were nervous. "After everything today…"

  If she only knew the funeral was the least of my problems right now, he thought. "Joey would've been thrilled to see all the guys from the Sox there."

  "It was so good of them to come."

  Ted nodded in agreement.

  "I liked what you said about crisis bringing out the best in people."

  He shrugged. "It's true."

  "Is there anything I can do for you, Ted?"

  Her heart was in her smile, and Ted wondered why he had never noticed it before. Or maybe he had, and that was why he'd asked her out. Either way, an uncomfortable realization settled over him. She had a thing for him, and he had the power to hurt her. Badly.

  He got up and went around the desk.

  Her eyes widened when he reached for her hand and kissed the back of it.

  "I need to be honest with you."

  "Okay," she stammered, glancing down at their joined hands as the pulse in her throat fluttered.

  "I'm not looking for anything serious."

  Her blue eyes flickered up to his. "I understand."

  "I don't want anyone to get hurt."

  Kelly smoothed her hand over his now-loosened Red Sox tie. "I'm a big girl, Ted. I can take care of myself."

  Ted saw the desire in her eyes and decided to find out if the reaction he'd had to Caroline was because he had gone without for so long. In one smooth move, he pushed the office door closed and leaned in to kiss Kelly.

  She wrapped her arms around him and uttered a sigh as her lips met his. Her fingers sank into his hair as her tongue flirted with his, her avid response telling Ted exactly what she wanted from him.

  His pager went off, and he drew back from her to reach for it on his belt. "They need me upstairs." He brushed a thumb over her cheek.

  She reached up to kiss him one last time. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  He watched her walk away, filled with regret and dismay. Kelly was everything he should have wanted in a woman. She was beautiful, fun, sensitive, caring, and sexy—really, really sexy—not to mention available. But when he kissed her, he'd felt nothing at all.

  Chapter 7

  John Smith was a fraud. To the outside world he was fun-loving Smitty, a persona he had worked so hard to perfect over the years he almost believed it himself. Anything was better than the truth—that he had grown up in Newport all right, just not in the part of town they featured in the tourist brochures. Sometimes it was hard to believe how far he had come from the housing projects. The son of James King, the richest man in America, was one of Smitty's best friends. Apparently, he had managed to impress James, and when James turned over the management of his personal fortune to Smitty, he had single-handedly guaranteed Smitty's partnership at the brokerage house.

  He made his first million by the time he was thirty-two, and thanks to James and his referrals, he was closing in on his sixth million at thirty-seven. Looking out at the lights of Manhattan from the bedroom of his gleaming twenty-second-floor co-op, he felt like a total failure. He never talked about his childhood in the ghetto with a cocaine-addicted mother and a revolving series of "uncles" who only kept their hands off Smitty because he was bigger than most of them. What they paid his mother for sex fed her addiction. One of them had fathered him, but she had no idea which one.

  She hadn't even loved him enough to give him a decent name. Instead he was stuck with the most boring, nondescript name in the world. People often didn't believe him when he told them his name was John Smith, thus the creation of Smitty. Even his three closest friends had no idea what his life had been like as he had scratched and clawed his way to an academic scholarship at Princeton.

  For the last five summers, Smitty had returned weekly to his hometown where he assumed his mother still lived. But he never saw her, never called her, and never thought of her except when these fits of pensiveness struck, usually when things were going a little too well. He wondered if she ever thought about him. Would she be pleased to know what he had done with his life? What he had made of himself? Would she allow her son to improve her circumstances or would she snort whatever money he gave her up her nose?

  What would happen to the life he had so carefully cultivated if the people in his world ever found out about where he came from? Would James still trust him to manage his vast portfolio? Would Parker, Chip, and Ted, all of them from prominent, respected families, still think of him as a brother if they knew he was the bastard son of a drug-addicted prostitute? The luckiest day of his life had occurred at the start of his sophomore year at Princeton when he had been assigned to live with Ted and found Chip and Parker next door. They thought his parents were dead. Years ago he had shown them a big pretty house in Newport and told them he had lived there as a kid. They had believed him. Why wouldn't they? What would his lies do to his nearly twenty-year friendship with the three men who meant more to him than anyone in the world?

  Their families had become his family. In particular, Smitty loved Mitzi and Lillian Duffy with a passion, and when people asked about his family, he thought of them. On Mother's Day, it was Mitzi and Lillian who received two-dozen pink roses from him—not the cokehead hooker who had given birth to him.

  An economics degree from Princeton, a Wharton MBA, and a few million in the bank had put some pedigree between him and his shameful past, but it hadn't been enough to keep his wife around. Cherie had left him when he told her the truth three years into their marriage. She couldn't live with someone who lied, she said on her way out the door, but not before he saw the revulsion on her face. His friends thought he had pulled the plug on the marriage, and Smitty let them think he'd been as glad to see her go as they were. John, on the other hand, had been devastated by the loss of his wife and had vowed to never again give anyone that kind of power over him.

  And then along came Caroline and away went all his resolve to protect his heart. Would she leave him too if she knew? Smitty turned away from the window and went over to where she slept in his big bed, her injured ankle propped on a pile of pillows, her arm curled over her head. Pretty pink lips were slightly open as she breathed through her mouth. She had kicked off the sheet, and the T-shirt of his that she had worn to bed had ridden up to her waist, giving him an unobstructed view of her spectacular, toned legs.

  His heart contracted. He loved her but knew she didn't love him—not the way he wanted her to, not yet anyway. Time, he told himself. Give it some time. They had only been together for a little over a month, and she thought he was too wounded from his failed marriage to commit to anyone else. That's what he wanted everyone to think. It was better they not
know how much he yearned for a wife who loved him, a real home, and children he could shower with everything he'd never had. Every day he went to work, played the market, hedged his bets, and built a small fortune as a down payment on the future he so desperately wanted.

  He leaned over to brush the hair back from Caroline's forehead. In every fantasy he'd had lately about that future, she played the starring role. Somehow he had to make her see that she belonged with him.

  Her eyes fluttered open. "Can't sleep again?" she whispered in a sleepy voice, holding out her hand to bring him down next to her on the bed.

  He kissed each of her fingers. "No."

  "I don't know how you function on so little sleep."

  He shrugged. Insomnia was nothing new. The worries and fears he managed to keep at arm's length during the day tended to come home to roost in the dark of night.

  Caroline reached for him, and he sank into her embrace.

  Her fingers worked the kinks from his neck and shoulders. "So carefree, yet so full of tension. Why is that?"

  "It's because I'm trying to keep my hands off your injured bod," he joked, dodging the question that struck too close to the truth.

  She studied him with knowing eyes, making him feel like she could almost see inside of him. Would she like what she saw if she discovered who he really was?

  He kissed her forehead. "Go back to sleep."

  Chapter 8

  Parker King was restless. He paced from one end of his Beacon Hill townhouse to the other but couldn't seem to rid himself of the energy that was so essential to his hectic days. Lately he'd had trouble turning it off when he got home at night, usually after a fourteen-hour day spent brokering the end of one marriage after another.

  At least he knew what was causing all this restless energy. He hadn't been entirely honest with Ted when they had their discussion about "the spark." Parker had felt it all right—a spark so bright and so hot it had nearly consumed him for the past couple of years. She was a client who had been through a nasty, messy divorce, and Parker was crazy in love with her.

  Her name was Gina, and she had walked into his office almost two years earlier looking like a wounded fawn. After ten minutes with her, Parker had known she was everything he had ever wanted. In light of that startling revelation, he considered not taking her case, but when he had managed to regain control of his heart and his hormones he'd realized he didn't want anyone else representing her. He was the best divorce lawyer in Boston, and he had made sure she and her two young sons got everything they were due from her lying, cheating, bastard of a husband.

  The divorce had been final for eleven and a half months—eleven and a half long months of self-imposed torture. Parker had been around divorce long enough to know she needed time to recover from the emotional rollercoaster she had been on for the last few years. So once the divorce was final he had marked his calendar for one year and made a plan to woo her without even knowing if she shared his feelings. That was why, late at night, after long days on the marital battlefield, he was filled with restless energy while images of her with another man filled his mind. He hoped he hadn't been a fool to wait so long to contact her.

  No one knew about her, and Parker was just superstitious enough to be afraid that if he told anyone it wouldn't work out. The closer he got to the one-year mark the more time seemed to slow to a crawl, and he wished he could talk to his friends about what he was going through. The next two weeks, the end of his waiting period, were going to be a pure, lonely agony.

  Parker couldn't deny that her kids gave him pause. Despite his close relationship with his own father, Parker didn't think of himself as father material. And since he had intimate knowledge of how little involvement their own father had with the boys, he knew any man in Gina's life would have to be willing to step up for her children, too. Parker had never met the boys, but he'd had nightmares about two-headed monsters with fangs chasing him from their mother's life. He hoped with all his heart that they were kids he would like and maybe even grow to love. But first he had to find out how she felt. Not knowing was killing him.

  Eleven and a half months had also given him ample time to hatch a plan to convince her he was the man for her. He had already arranged for two-dozen yellow roses to arrive at her home on the one-year anniversary of her divorce. About sixty drafts later, he had finally settled on what he hoped was the right note to send with them:

  "I missed seeing you this year. Call me. Parker."

  He had enclosed his business card with his office, cell, and home phone numbers in case she had forgotten how to reach him. Over and over he had mulled whether putting the ball in her court was the right strategy, but in the end, he had decided he would make the first move and wait to see how she responded.

  He had also spent an enormous amount of time wondering if she had any idea who he was—or rather, who his father was. Parker had learned to be extremely discerning about the people he allowed into his life. For the most part he'd been lucky, but he had been burned a few times in his younger years by gold diggers—male and female—who were more interested in what his father could do for them than they were in him. These days he had a solid reputation of his own, but still he was careful.

  His gut told him he didn't need to worry about that with Gina. During her divorce negotiations, he'd had to push her to demand what she deserved, so Parker knew money wasn't the first thing on her mind. It was her sweetness that had first attracted him, not to mention her incredible eyes and her chestnut curls. He couldn't wait to bury his face in those curls and kiss her senseless. Just the thought of being able to touch her made him weak with desire.

  She was someone he could curl up with on a cold afternoon, walk hand-in-hand with through the rain, and sleep with every night of his life without ever growing tired of her.

  Parker groaned. I'm never going to survive another two weeks of this. And what if, at the end of all this torture, she isn't even interested in me? Well, if that happens, I'll do whatever it takes to change her mind.

  * * *

  Ted arrived at Kelly's apartment in the city right at seven. He'd had to scramble to get there on time after one of his bone marrow transplant patients developed an infection that threw his afternoon off schedule. The good thing about dating one of the nurses he worked with was he wouldn't have to explain such things to her.

  He wanted to be more excited about the date. He wished he had thought about it during the day, counted the hours until it was time to pick her up, and obsessed about the details in an effort to please her. In reality, it felt more like dinner with a good friend than a date.

  Reminding himself of his plan and determined to give Kelly a chance, he rang the bell.

  All the excitement he lacked was reflected in the smile Kelly greeted him with. "Hi, Ted. Come on in."

  "You look great," he said, admiring her short black cocktail dress.

  "Thanks, so do you."

  He had changed at the hospital into a blue blazer, a light blue silk shirt, and tan dress pants.

  "I love your place."

  "It's small, but it's home. Can I get you a beer or some wine?"

  "No, thanks. I'm good." He strolled over to check out her view of the Boston Commons.

  She brought her glass of wine with her when she joined him at the window. "This isn't going to happen, is it, Ted?"

  Surprised, he turned to her. "What isn't?"

  "I've hooked kids up to chemo who look less stricken than you did walking in here."

  "Stricken?" he stammered. "I don't get it."

  "Neither do I." She took a sip of her wine. "Why did you ask me out?"

  He shrugged. "Because I like you."

  "After six years of working together you suddenly want to date me?"

  "If it's so strange, why did you say yes?"

  "Because I've had a crush on you for years," she confessed.

  He hung his head. "I'm sorry."

  "What's going on, Ted?"

  His jaw clenched
with tension as he glanced at her and found a friend looking at him, her expression fraught with concern. "I'm afraid it might be possible…

  "What?"

  "I seem to have fallen for my best friend's girlfriend," he said quietly.

  Her eyes widened with surprise. "So what was I then? A diversion?"

  "No, not really." His tone was less than convincing, even to him. "I never meant to hurt you. I just…" He was mortified when his throat closed.

  "Oh, Ted." She took his hand and led him to the sofa.

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you out, but I had a big plan to get a life so I could get past this craziness. I guess I've always sort of sensed you'd be receptive, but I was wrong to involve you in this … this mess."

  "Tell me about it," she said, continuing to hold his hand.

  Relieved to have someone he could share it with, Ted told her about meeting Caroline the previous weekend and the immediate, overwhelming feelings he'd had for her. "I don't know what to do," he concluded, his voice full of despair.

  Kelly shook her head with dismay. "There's nothing you can do. He's too important to you, and you'd never forgive yourself for hurting him."

  He dropped his head into his hands. "I know."

  She held out her arms to him, and he welcomed the comfort of her embrace.

  "It isn't fair for me to be dumping this on you," he said when he pulled back from her.

  "You needed a friend more than anything tonight."

  "Thank you."

  "I'm not going to lie to you—I'm kind of disappointed, but I'm not entirely surprised. I couldn't figure out what had suddenly changed that would make you want to go out with me."